A Quote by Fred Willard
My first improv was Second City in Chicago. Before that, I worked at - with a partner, doing comedy sketches.
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After college, I knew I wanted to work in comedy, so the first thing I did was go to where the comedy was. I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago, because that's where The Second City and Improv Olympics are. You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you.
Second City Las Vegas is very different from Second City in Chicago on the main stage, where they do improv sets. That's how they kind of hone material, kind of work up to new material.
I worked with the Groundlings, doing sketch comedy and improv at a theater here in L.A. It was my hobby, but I took classes and stayed passionate about it because it's what I wanted to do. It just fit. It takes a while before you can actually make money at it. I worked for years.
If there's one regret I have of my time in comedy it's that I really I was so obsessed with improv for so many years and I exclusively did improv for the first 6 years or 7 years. I was doing comedy and then I started doing solo work and stand up, a bit of writing, making videos, and really going into it on that end.
I joined an improv group in college, which was a lot of fun. After I graduated, I moved to Chicago to try to get into the Second City.
I always honestly dreamed of coming to Second City in Chicago, although I've never even been there to see a show. But I did a ton of sketch comedy at the Second City in LA, which (at the time, in a different location) wasn't really a theater, it was just a space where you took some classes.
I had worked for ten years in theater; I had worked at Second City in Chicago. Then I got to Hollywood, and I was like, naively, 'Where's my pilot?'
I started out in comedy gigging and scraping a living together, and eventually worked up to doing shows at the Comedy Store in London in 1979. That led on to me presenting a show in the early days of Channel 4 called 'Whatever You Want,' which had live music and sketches.
I feel like L.A. is more of a showcase, and Chicago is a pure comedy scene where you're doing comedy for comedy. You're doing comedy actually for the audience that's there.
I moved to Chicago when I was 28, and I wasn't completely idealistic about going to Second City and making a living from comedy, but I knew it would be great for the resume.
My stepfather had a connection with The Second City and told me I should go there. I woke up in a cold sweat one night and said, 'I'm moving to Chicago.' That's how I went to Second City.
Well, actually, the Second City thing came about because I was taking a few improv classes there. I thought that the improv classes would help with my wrestling career, which it has.
I have always been doing sketch comedy since I was a kid because one of my mom's boyfriends was an improv comedy guy so were doing skits all the time growing up.
I had a teacher who recommended I take improv classes in Chicago - I'm from Evanston, Illinois - so I did improv classes at Improv Olympic, and that kind of opened me up.
We started off in improv and sketch comedy, and with improv the most important thing is to listen and make sure you're not stepping over someone, so we've been trained for such a long time doing that.
When I was in college my improvisation troupe and I did a road trip to Chicago, and went to The Second City to see the classic 'Paradigm Lost' revue - with Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Scott Adsit and Kevin Dorff. It blew my mind, and proved to me you can do sketch comedy like you're doing 'Long Day's Journey into Night.' We could treat it like theater.
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